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showing her something at that particular moment too. It was
something about power and spite, she thought, that the girl from the wrong side
of the tracks was all grown up now and somebody to be reckoned with. She got
that message clearly. And never broke the look as she purposefully and calmly
walked over to the bedroom and closed the door.
    Billy slumped back into his chair. Began
fiddling with his evil-looking knife again. She crossed to the couch nearby and
sat. He wasn’t going to scare her. Damned if he was. In the kitchen she could
hear Ray swilling at the bottle. In the bedroom she could hear them . They all could. She had the
feeling that it bothered each of them in one way or the other. She reached
into her purse.
    “You mind if I smoke?”
    “Unh-unh. It’s your domesticity.”
    She lit it, crossed her legs and tried to
relax.
    “Your TV work?” he said.
    “Remote’s right over there.”
    He took it off the table and pushed the
power button. Some innocuous family comedy sprang out at them and the sounds
from the bedroom disappeared beneath canned laughter. He started surfing the
channels. His attention span seemed to be just about what she’d expect it to
be: nil.
    “Cinemax? HBO? Showtime?”
    “No.”
    She saw him take in the furnishings—the
Boston rocker, the rows of hand-carved decoys, the country primitive desk and
pie safe and chairs and table, the 1821 children’s sampler, the hundred-year-old
map of the Hudson River, the heavy carved-oak shelving, the Tiffany-style
lamps.
    “I wouldn’t think you were that
penurious,” he said.
    “Excuse me?”
    “I wouldn’t think you were that
penurious. That you’d just have basic cable, I mean. You have so many
encumbrances here.”
    She sure did.
     
    * * *
     
    It seemed forever sitting there with
Billy flicking his goddamn knife open and shut with one hand and the channels
with the other but it was probably no more than fifteen minutes because she was
only on her second smoke when the bedroom door opened and there was Marion,
this time draped in a bedsheet. Her bedsheet.
    “Janet? Come on in a minute, would ya?”
    Her bedroom seemed sullied to her now.
Foreign. Enemy territory. She didn’t care for the notion of going in.
    “Why?”
    “Got to ask you something.”
    “Ask me here.”
    “It’s girl
talk , honey.”
    She stubbed out the cigarette. As she
passed she saw Ray seated in the kitchen, the bottle in front of him, pulling
cards out of his wallet and shoving them back again, frustrated. Still looking
for that family photo. She wondered if it even existed.
    At the door Marion took her arm and led
her into the room and there was Emil on the bed lying sprawled beneath her
coverlet. Marion closed the door behind her and stood there and Emil smiled.
    “ Next ,”
he said.
    It was a gut punch that turned instantly
to rage and fear.
    “Fuck you !”
she said, and turned and saw Marion blocking her way and didn’t hesitate for a
moment— her two elder brothers had taught her to fight way back when and damned
if she’d forgotten. She threw her right to the side of her jaw and Marion went
down against the pinewood door like so much raw meat. She shoved her out of the way and her hand was on
the doorknob when Emil lunged naked off the bed and she felt the warm sweat of
his arms around her waist straight through her clothing. He pulled her down on
top of him and she turned in his arms, kicking and squirming and trying to pull
free but he was too strong. He shoved and rolled her so that he was on top of
her straddling her hips, his hands pinning hers to the mattress near the foot
of the bed. Then she felt other hands on her wrists, not as strong but strong
enough and she heard Marion spit the word bitch and looked up at her naked and looming over her and holding her down, Billy and
Ray standing in the doorway behind her and she knew she’d get no help from
either one of them.
    “Don’t do this. Please, Marion!”
    Marion smiled. And there